Is there any chance that the Islamic State has opened the door for a powerful new adversary to enter the active worldwide fight against the terrorist monsters?
British and U.S. intelligence officials are beginning to piece together a theory that a bomb was placed aboard a Russian Metrojet charter airplane that exploded over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
All 224 people aboard the craft, mostly Russian, died in the tragic crash.
Then we hear that ISIS has taken credit for the explosion, even though recovery teams at the crash site initially said they couldn’t find evidence of a bomb.
Well, if there is to be any possible silver lining in this tragedy — and the world is sending its sympathy to the families of those who perished — it is that Russia well might now become an active ally of the United States in this global anti-terror conflict.
If history is a judge of how the Russians might react to this carnage, then the Islamic State well might have picked the wrong foe to fight.
History tells us that when Nazi German troops invaded the then-Soviet Union in June 1941, they plundered the territory they captured en route to Moscow. They killed millions of Russians.
The Red Army then turned the tide against the Germans and began advancing westward, driving the Germans out of Russia. They returned the “favor,” so to speak, by killing German soldiers who were surrendering. They fought a vengeance-filled advance on an enemy that had brought so much misery to innocent victims.
Yes, history possibly can be a guide to the kind of vengeance that contemporary Russia might seek in this worldwide war against the Islamic State.
President Obama would do well to recruit his adversary Russian President Vladimir Putin to join us in this struggle.